The Green Integer Blog supplements our Green Integer website with essays on various cultural topics by editor/publisher Douglas Messerli, along with a listing of Green Integer titles and information on our new books. Please note that all essays and commentary are copyrighted by the author, Douglas Messerli, and may not be republished without permission.

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Friday, March 25, 2016

Today,
I received, as I have many days over the past few years, a friendly call from
my United Health Care, who regularly counsels me about my need to call the
pharmacy about my drug dosages and question my general health. Since I am still
quite competent and order my drug refills on time, and since I had, this time,
just seen my primary doctor for my annual checkup, I angrily hung up—the call,
after all, was an automatic one, with no human being behind it who might be
hurt or abused by my obstinate return of the phone to its cradle.

I know why they are they are calling. I
am 68 years of age, and in May I will be 69; I am described by them, and the
government, as a senior citizen. And they are a bit worried that I may becoming
somewhat forgetful, perhaps even moving toward a bit of dementia that perhaps
might allow me to forget about my need to call my pharmacy for a refill, or
allow me to ignore major signals of human deterioration. In truth, I am quite
actively killing myself through alcohol, but my health plan doesn’t actually
know that—although perhaps my primary doctor has reported that information to
them. Nonetheless, I’m angry. They are treating me as a very old man, who
doesn’t quite know what I’m doing, while I perceive—and I presume anyone who
read these pages might perceive—I am not quite there yet.

My entire writing in the My Year volumes is about my memory,
wherein I have revealed, apparently, that I remember much more than other
members of my own generation and those even younger can now recall. Yes, there
is always the possibility, as we all must admit, that I have misremembered
much, or make up some of what I define as the past. But I have worked hard to
produce actual documents that reiterate my own memory; and I believe that what
I am remembering from so long ago actually represents facts, as I have worked
hard to substantiate my own experiences.

I specifically do recall my mother’s own
complaints of a decade or two ago (now, at 90 years of age, she no longer
complains since she is suffering from dementia) that whenever she had a doctor
visit, he would communicate only with my brother or sister, as if she was not
in the same room. “She,” the doctor might report, is “suffering from
….whatever…” as if my mother might not be able to hear or respond about the
report. What she was severely suffering was the absolute ignorance of her own
being in the very room in which she sat with the doctor. Why couldn’t the
doctor turn to her and tell her, to her face, what was the problem? And why
couldn’t my brother or sister speak up for her, and report that she, in fact,
was sitting right before them, and might be actually spoken to?

I
was angry for my mother when she reported this through our long telephonic
conversations, where I had determined to allow her to speak rather than me
dominating our conversations. It was after the death of our father, in the
process of which I had to deal with my mother, that I learned to simply stop
talking and begin to listen to the woman with whom I’d had so many battles,
that changed everything. I began to listen, and was pained by what I knew she
was encountering. If only I had been there, I am sure I would have told those
doctors to please speak to my mother instead of to me: she was alive and very
much able to listen to their advisements. But they treated her, at the age of
70 and, later 80, as if she couldn’t possibly comprehend what they might have
said. She was angry and hurt.

Despite her belief in the system and her
absolute commitment to authority, she had finally begun, in her old age, to
doubt the wisdom they might have pontificated. And, I think, in the end, even
today, it has changed her entire vision of what the authorities or the system
might be able to offer for her own existence.

She is disturbed today when the workers at
her health-care facility sweep in and take away her day-old blouses and pants
to clean them; she is peeved when they suddenly force her into the showers for
a needed clean-up. I try to explain to her that these actions represent only
good intentions, to make sure her clothes (which she may not know she has
spoiled) are properly cleaned, and that her body is purified, as she always
desired it would be. My mother spent her entire life cleaning our house and our
lives…why does she now so resist the idea?

Well, I do now begin to understand. It is
not she who matters as much as a system that is insisting she behave in a
certain way. Without even knowing it, she has become a kind of resistant elderly
person who no longer desires to be defined by the society at large. Although,
in her thinking, she remains a conservative, she has joined the intellectual
revolutions of those who feel abused by the system.

When my sister wanted to have my mother
be tested for Alzheimer’s, I adamantly protested. Even having such a test would
have possibly have determined that she was suffering from something far more
seriously than her simple aging memory. She still tells me, every time I call
her, even to this day, what she eats each evening, and shares with me her
personal hurts from the comments her dinner-companions make; although these are
stories she has repeated over the years, they are, I am sure, incessantly
repeated, little accusations of why she isn’t wearing earrings (when the
accuser never wears any kind of jewelry), etc. If these are repetitious statements,
they are probably represent repetitious actions reiterated by the looks and
statements of her table mates day after day; or, even if existing only in my
mother’s overactive imagination, they still dominate her memory.

She has still her imagination. She reads.
She wonders when my sister might join her again in an evening of what she
perceives as “illegal” glass of wine or two in her small room (“I have to share
a bathroom,” she incessantly complains); she remembers and appreciates my
weekly calls. She is angry only for being treated as if she had no active mind.
How can I blame her for that perception?; and even her expressing it is only
evidence that she does still very much have an active mind.

When I recently went to the doctor for my
annual checkup, for the first time in my life the attending nurse, after
checking my blood pressure and reconfirming my pill usages, suddenly told me
that she was going to mention four words—table, apple, peach, and knife—which I
might be asked to repeat later. I immediately knew why she was asking those
questions. Was I suffering from Alzheimer’s or dementia? Suddenly I was terrified:
had I become my mother, an old person to whom they could they longer directly speak?

“What year is it?” she suddenly inquired.
I was so astounded by the banality of the question that for a few seconds I
couldn’t even speak. “2016,” I answered.

And what day is it?

I puffed for a few seconds in shock.
“Tuesday, the day of my appointment,” I answered. “And it’s March in case
you’re interested.”

She was.

Now can you recall the four words I
mentioned beforehand.

I offered them up in their opposite
listing: “Knife, peach, apple, table.” Not very original or profound words. And
you might notice they all relate to a perfectly happy picnic? The kind I might
have experienced in my childhood.

My friendly hispanic nurse said nothing.
I had proven that I was not “one of them”—the old folk who needed further help.

Everything was fine.

Everything was not fine. All good boys
and all good girls do not to heaven go simply by knowing. If you get too far up
the scale, well there’s sour notes up there and you will most definitely be
punished for hitting them.

I hope when I am 80 years of age, a
doctor will speak to me, directly, telling me if I am still living or about to
die. Please, doctor, do not speak to the ghost behind my shoulder. I want to
talk to you directly, even if I can’t quite comprehend what you’re talking
about. I have spent my life attempting to explain my experiences to your
generation.